The 2026 BAFTA Nominations Imply a Different Version of the Same Oscars Conclusions

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The way the awards calendar shook out, this conclusion was a bit reverse engineered, with them being announced a week after the Academy nods they usually influence, but the 2026 BAFTA nominations once again prove that the British awards body is currently the most dependable at predicting where the Oscars race is going.

That is not to say the two film academies are completely in sync. For example, “One Battle After Another” got one more BAFTA nomination than “Sinners,” and the BAFTAs favored nominating younger stars like “Hamnet” actor Paul Mescal and 2025 acting breakout Odessa A’Zion and Chase Infiniti, while overlooking older stars who did receive an Oscar nomination, like “Weapons” actress Amy Madigan and “Sinners” actor Delroy Lindo.

But just looking at the BAFTA Best Film nominations alone supports the long held idea (only slightly challenged by the DGA Awards and Actor Awards nominations,) that if the Oscars had gone back to only five Best Picture nominees, they would have been “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” and “Sentimental Value.”

Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” being the odd one out is not so much a rejection of his long-awaited film, or its distributor Netflix, as much as it’s just the Mexican filmmaker suffering from success. His Best Picture and Best Director Oscar wins for “The Shape of Water” were less than a decade ago, and he’s been back for every film he’s made since, winning Best Animated Feature for his previous film, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.” He has felt like a constant presence at the Oscars, while “Hamnet” filmmaker Chloé Zhao, for example, who also won Best Picture and Best Director even more recently, almost got sent away to Director Jail post-”Eternals,” and has had a campaigned shaped around the idea that her new literary adaptation is her big, back-to-basics, comeback.

That narrative may honestly lead all the way to “Hamnet” winning Best Film at the BAFTAs. Though it was not the nominations leader it was not far from it with 11 nominations. But another unique aspect of BAFTAs are its British-specific categories like Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, which widen the aperture of what films BAFTA voters consider as awards contenders.

What has circled back into me believing that “One Battle After Another” is the frontrunner to win Best Film at the BAFTAs, just as it is the frontrunner to win Best Picture at the Oscars, is the British awards body’s Best Casting nominees. Oscar nominees “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners,” and “Marty Supreme” all made it in, while “Hamnet” did not — likely replaced by fellow Best British Film nominee “I Swear.” All the films that won big at the British Independent Film Awards are all peppered through the BAFTA nominations list too, “I Swear” being the leader of that pack that also includes films like “Pillion” and “The Ballad of Wallis Island.”

Ultimately, the point I am trying to make is that because there does not seem to be a consensus across all categories on what BAFTA voters deem the Best British Film, Focus Features, the distributor of both “Hamnet” and last year’s big BAFTA winner “Conclave,” now seems even more unlikely to pull off back-to-back Best Film wins.

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